He either missed "Talk like a Pirate Day"or he's excited about Pittsburgh's baseball team winning a playoff game for the first time in over 20 years. (Good thing; it'll take his mind off the Stillers.)

Amazing atmosphere in the city! Like the Pens 2009 run to the Cup. Much different compared the Steelers las 2 SB wins. Not saying the Pirates will go all the way, just happy to be in the city yo experience this run. Go Bucs!!

Truth be told I like the Pirates, I think I always have. But then I like the Reds too, especially Dusty's Reds.

Pittsburg's a baseball town going way back - back to ol' Honus and the Crawfords and the Homestead Grays. I wasn't around for Mazeroski and Clemente and that lot but I did grow up in New England and as a terminal Red Sox fan I was smitten early on - any team that takes a world series from the wanks is righteous in my book!

The '71 series too was a few years before I really got on board with baseball, but it's sort of like the '70 World Cup, in that the colour TV broadcast has endured in a way that makes it seem familiar even to those of us who were actually too young to have any memories it. Clemente and Sanguillén, Stargell and Cash ... the Robinsons! - yeah, I was a fan from my earliest days I reckon!

'79 I remember clear enough, the birds and the bucs again, Pops and the family, Robinson, Moreno & Parker, those pillbox caps! I hope they go all the way, I really do. Personally I'de love a Red Sox -Pirates series!

1. I'll always get behind a perennial underdog making a run. And with the local Indians eliminated last night, that leaves Pittsburgh.2. I despise the godless Cardinals...that alone is enough to make me a temporary Bucs fan.

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Aaaaaar ! Thu Oct 03, 2013 10:46 am

Tom Verducci wrote:

Upon being bounced from the postseason after it had hardly begun, Reds second baseman Brandon Phillips used the most explosive word to be heard in any locker room: Cincinnati, he said, "choked" in the Wild Card Game last night. The word choke makes for a headline and grabs attention, two things Phillips never shies away from. But it's simply dead wrong. The Reds didn't choke. They were a team that had been leaking oil for weeks, and that was in no shape to deal with a worst-case pitching matchup: lefty-killer Francisco Liriano dealing in his home ballpark in Pittsburgh.

Cincinnati gave the ball to a rusty Johnny Cueto, who had thrown just 12 innings since June 28, all against the Mets and the Astros, two of the worst offenses in baseball. Reds manager Dusty Baker had to start Cueto because Mat Latos was hurt. His bullpen didn't have Tony Cingrani, who was hurt, or an effective version of Sean Marshall, who was hurt for much of the year. Cincinnati's offense entered the game hitting .234 over its last 18 games. Drip, drip, drip.

The Reds rely on the left-handed bats of Shin-Shoo Choo, Joey Votto and Jay Bruce, but that trio had no chance against Liriano. The Pirates left-hander had faced lefties 138 times this year and had allowed no home runs, just two extra-base hits and a .131 batting average.

It was a worst-case scenario for Cincinnati, which put itself in this position with an 8-10 finish, a slump that included getting swept at home by the Pirates on the final weekend of the season. Cueto looked like a pitcher fussing his way through a rehab start. The right-hander just wasn't game sharp. Since last season, when an oblique injury took him out of the Division Series after one batter -- and similar injuries kept him on the shelf for most of this year -- Cueto and the Reds have thought about ditching his whirling delivery. With the season on the line last night, Cueto was so lost he decided to give the idea a try. When he came to the mound in the third inning -- after having continually left balls up in the first two innings -- he pitched out of the stretch, ditching his Luis Tiant-like spin. Cueto lasted only four more outs. He faced just 19 batters in all, and nine of them reached base. He had no strikeouts.

Yes, anything can happen in a one-game playoff. But you definitely don't want your ace to improvise his way through a start.

Liriano was too good to let Cincinnati get away with Cueto's makeshift performance. Of Liriano's first seven pitches, the Reds swung and missed at four of them. When the fourth inning started Cincinnati still hadn't hit a ball out of the infield. It was 3-0 by then and the game was effectively over.

Liriano is the kind of scavenger hunt story that keeps general managers dreaming. The same guy who lost his stuff to Tommy John surgery and continually fought bouts of wildness was out there on the free-agent market while teams were dropping $146 million to stock their rotations with such pitchers as Edwin Jackson, Ryan Dempster, Jeremy Guthrie, Brandon McCarthy, Joe Blanton and Dan Haren.

Free agency gets attention because of dollars, but it works because of fits. And the Pirates and Liriano are a great fit. By coming to Pittsburgh, Liriano broke free from the American League to the easier National League lineups. He also fell into the Pirate Way of pitching. Pittsburgh bases its pitching philosophy on this premise: Figure out what pitch in what count in what location has the greatest chance of producing a groundball and throw it. Liriano bought all in, junking his four-seam fastball to become a sinker-slider-changeup pitcher.

This year the Pirates' staff was the only one in baseball that induced ground balls on more than half the balls put in play against it. Ground balls do not result in extra bases nearly as often as do fly balls and line drives. Last night Liriano obtained only two of his 21 outs in the air: one fly ball and one pop-up.

I've only been following baseball again in the last couple of years. The Giants have always been my team. When they started falling into terrible luck with injuries and snafus this year, knowing what kind of team they have and what they can do (naysayers be damned), the Pirates got a closer look. I watched the Bucs last year a little, but the Jints were on such a roll, it was like Orange and Black Christmas for me. The Bucs have the same heart, manic team, talent and potential--that only they can realize. They're not big-spending "sluggers" and they've got the magic I like in a baseball team.

The Cubs are ALL heart, at the price of their management/talent, which is why I will always enjoy a good Cubbies game. They have good ownership, a wonderful, historic stadium, and one day I'll catch a game there. Cubs fans are real, because they stick with 'em, love and hate aside.

Meanwhile, on to a great postseason!

GuestGuest

Subject: Re: Aaaaaar ! Thu Oct 03, 2013 10:25 pm

Oh lovely.

Not only does Hurdle leave that steaming pile unmolested 'til it was 7-0 with nobody out.